MenuKit

What it is

MenuKit is a Fabric-side UI library for mod authors. It provides primitives for putting UI on top of Minecraft:

• HUD panels that overlay the game world (waypoint markers, status displays, debug overlays)
• Decoration panels on vanilla menu screens (settings buttons next to the inventory, info displays on storage UIs)
• Standalone screens built from MenuKit primitives instead of vanilla widget code
• Region anchoring so panels position themselves relative to screen edges and other panels — multiple mods coexist without overlapping
• Modal overlays with proper click-through prohibition
• Recipe-book awareness so panels respect the player's recipe-book state

MenuKit is pure client-side. If you only need UI, depend on MenuKit alone. If you need custom container menus with slots, see MenuKit: Containers — the slot extension built on MenuKit.

Install

Add the Modrinth Maven repository and the MenuKit dependency to your build.gradle:

repositories {
    maven { url 'https://api.modrinth.com/maven' }
}

dependencies {
    modImplementation 'maven.modrinth:menukit:1.0.0'
}

And declare the dependency in your src/main/resources/fabric.mod.json:

"depends": {
    "menukit": "*"
}

That's it. MenuKit is client-only (environment: client), so its weight on your mod is zero on the server side.

Quickstart

A HUD panel

// In your ClientModInitializer
public void onInitializeClient() {
    MKHudPanel.builder("coords")
        .anchor(MKHudAnchor.TOP_LEFT, 4, 4)
        .padding(4).autoSize()
        .style(PanelStyle.RAISED)
        .text(0, 0, () -> "X: " + (int) Minecraft.getInstance().player.getX())
        .text(0, 12, () -> "Y: " + (int) Minecraft.getInstance().player.getY())
        .build();
}

A decoration panel on a vanilla menu screen

// In your ClientModInitializer
List<PanelElement> elements = List.of(
    new Button(0, 0, 50, 16, Component.literal("Settings"),
        btn -> openSettings()));

Panel buttonPanel = new Panel(
    "myapp-settings-button",
    elements,
    /*visible=*/ true,
    PanelStyle.NONE,
    PanelPosition.BODY,
    /*toggleKey=*/ -1);

new ScreenPanelAdapter(buttonPanel, MenuRegion.RIGHT_ALIGN_TOP, /*padding=*/ 0)
    .on(InventoryScreen.class, CreativeModeInventoryScreen.class);

The button appears in the upper-right of vanilla InventoryScreen and CreativeModeInventoryScreen. If another MenuKit-using mod also drops a panel in RIGHT_ALIGN_TOP, both stack vertically — no manual coordination required.

Feature highlights

• Region anchoring system. Eight edge regions (LEFT/RIGHT × ALIGN_TOP/BOTTOM, TOP/BOTTOM × ALIGN_LEFT/RIGHT) plus CENTER. Panels stack in the region's flow direction. Multi-mod-friendly by design — deterministic stacking order across mods via alphabetical-by-modId with optional priority override.
• Element library. Button, Toggle, Checkbox, Radio, RadioGroup, Icon, Divider, ItemDisplay, ProgressBar, Slider, TextField, TextLabel, Tooltip, ScrollContainer, Dropdown.
• Modal overlays. Proper click-through prohibition over vanilla menus. Modals respect Esc, focus traversal, and z-ordering.
• Recipe-book awareness. Panels track the recipe-book panel's open/closed state so they don't fight for screen real estate.
• Auto-wrap + auto-scroll. TextLabel.setWrapWidth() triggers automatic line wrapping; ScrollContainer provides scrollable regions with mouse-wheel input.
• Universal cursor capture. Compensates for vanilla teleporting the cursor to window center on screen transitions.
• Stable, opinionated layout. Pinned-width / pinned-height stacking primitives keep panels predictable across resolutions.

MenuKit alone vs. MenuKit + Containers

Use MenuKit alone if you're building:

• HUD overlays (waypoints, debug, status)
• Decoration panels on vanilla menus (settings buttons, info displays)
• Custom screens built from MenuKit elements

Use MenuKit + MenuKit: Containers if you're building:

• Custom container menus (storage blocks with new slot layouts)
• Per-slot state that needs server authority
• Anything that touches slot handlers

MenuKit: Containers depends on MenuKit; MenuKit doesn't depend on MenuKit: Containers. The partition is enforced at compile time.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.

Issues

File issues at github.com/trevorschoeny/menukit/issues.